Guitar legend and former Dire Straits frontman and leader Mark Knopfler reflected on his current guitar skills, admitting that they have “deteriorated a little bit.”
At this point, he owes us nothing. Mark made such a huge impact from the very start with Dire Straits’ 1978 self-titled record and its song “Sultans of Swing.” After that, plenty of other landmark guitar-oriented pieces came, with Knopfler perfectly executing his guitar skills to serve the incredible pieces that he has written.
Speaking to the Guitarist magazine recently, Knopfler discussed his current works, saying that his writing skills are as good as ever while his guitar playing has suffered a little.
“Well, I’ve certainly been writing more songs and I don’t know whether that was [specifically] to do with the pandemic or not, or because I just had more time,” Knopfler said (via Guitar.com). “But it certainly hasn’t helped my playing any.”
“The musician part [of me] is much reduced, I think, but the writer part is as strong as ever. If a song wants to be born, then I try to let it happen, but I think the playing has deteriorated a little bit… I’d [find I’d] be ready to sit down and look at a song on the computer, but I wouldn’t be playing enough.”
Nonetheless, despite making a short break in his work, we’re still more than certain that Knopfler is full of musical ideas. However, the guitar legend also added that he’ll still focus on his playing and will sort things out.
“But that’s just something that seems to have happened recently,” he continued. “And I should really take steps to spend more time behind the instrument, to just get playing. It’s not that I’ve forgotten how to play it – I’m just rusty.”
Earlier this year, Mark Knopfler auctioned off a huge portion of his guitar collection. Done through Christie’s London, the instruments sold for over $11 million. Not long before the auction, Knopfler did a Q&A session at the auction house where he said that there’s rarely any need to have so many guitars in the first place.
“You certainly don’t need as many as I’ve been using,” Mark said. “On a gig, I might get through six or seven guitars.”
Reflecting on his collaboration with John Suhr and Rudy Pensa, who made some of his legendary guitars, Knopfler added:
“The reason why the Pensa — the Rudy — came along was because I was looking to find a way of using less guitars on the set so I could get a powerful sound. That thick pickup you see by the bridge, that’s a humbucking, a really powerful pickup.”
“And the single-coil pickups in the front [are] more like Fender pickups. And I was just trying to get more sounds out of one instrument, so I didn’t have to keep jumping around.”
“Some of the nicer sounds you get are the blends between the pickups at the back of where the bridge is — the harder sounds — and the ones at the front end, which are softer and more pillowy. And you can get tones between them.”
“But then I found out that you can get a lot of different sounds from a Les Paul too if you can be bothered — which I couldn’t for a long time.”
“But if you can be bothered to learn how the volume controls work together and the tone controls work, then you can get some proper effects out of the guitar and get the guitar to work for you a little bit better instead of just turning everything full on, which was my specialty.”
“There’s a much better way that you can work with a Les Paul, and I had to learn that. And probably my old guitar techs would be sitting there thinking, ‘Now he tells us.’”
Recently, Mark Knopfler released a reworked version of his 1983 instrumental “Going Home: Theme of the Local Hero.” For this occasion, he invited an all-star lineup of guests, including Tony Iommi, Brian May, Eric Clapton, Sonny Landreth, Slash, Joe Satriani, Joe Bonamassa, Steve Vai, Buddy Guy, and many, many others. However, most importantly, the piece features the final recordings by Jeff Beck before his tragic passing in early 2023.
Photo: Raph_PH (KnopfRAH220519 20)
